Dani King believes Great Britain's women's team pursuit squad can break the 4min 10sec barrier.

Last Updated: 07/11/13 12:53pm

Dani King has been a core part of Britain's all-conquering women's team pursuit squad

Sutton said after the quartet's world record-breaking performance of 4mim 19sec at the Track Cycling World Cup in Manchester last weekend that they could ride somewhere between 4min 7sec and 4min 10sec in the future.

The event has recently been changed from three riders over 3km to four riders over 4km and while it remains early days in terms of what times may be achievable, the squad knocked a huge seven seconds off a previous world record they had set at the European championships a fortnight earlier.

Sutton's prediction raised eyebrows given that a 4mim 7sec ride would see the British women catch and overtake some of the slower men's squads, but King, who has helped the squad become Olympic, world and European champions, feels such a time is not outside the realm of possibility.

"He is projecting under 4min 10sec and we rode a 4mim 19sec in the final - so about 10 seconds he wants us to go quicker by," she told What's The Story.

"I think it is an achievable target. We have got a long way to go with this event - we have only just started really.

Achievable target

"It is going to be tough, but I remember when they gave us a target for London [the 2012 Olympics] and we all said there is no way we will do that, and we ended up going quicker than the target that was set."

Despite the women's team pursuit squad becoming renowned for the regularity with which they break their own world record, King insisted that a sub-4min 10sec ride will not arrive overnight.

She added: "We have performance targets at world cups, world championships, we have got the Commonwealth Games next year, and it will be a case of rubbing the time off gradually.

"I think it is about not getting too fixated on that time. It is all about focusing on our own performance and then, hopefully, the outcome of a perfect performance will be a world record."